G.O.P. Firebrands Tone Down Their Message and Run Again

Former Representative Bob Dold, second from left, in Libertyville, Ill., in November. Mr. Dold, who lost in 2012 after one term, is seeking a comeback next year.Credit
Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. — “My name is Congressman Bob Dold!” said the fleece-clad man making his way through a popular restaurant here.

Well, not exactly. His name is Bob Dold, but he isn’t a current member of Congress. He’s a former congressman who represented the 10th District of Illinois. “And I’d like to again,” he tells a table of diners about to tuck into a giant cheese crepe.

Mr. Dold is seeking a political resurrection in next November’s election, after just one term on Capitol Hill. After riding the Tea Party wave to Washington in 2010, he was swept out of office by the Obama tsunami in Illinois in 2012.

Now he is among at least nine Republicans, a mix of former incumbents and previous challengers, who are running again — but with a difference. This time they have shelved their incendiary remarks about President Obama and the national debt in favor of a narrower focus on the Affordable Care Act, which they hope will attract moderate voters from both parties, even in heavily Democratic districts, who are disenchanted with its rollout.

The campaigns, if successful, could be an indication of change in some corners of the Republican Party as many former firebrands mellow their messages and people like Mr. Dold, who benefited from the Tea Party but was one of the more moderate members of the House, try to capitalize on the center. At the very least, their campaigns show that some people who ran vociferously against Washington appear eager to get back there.

They figure their odds of winning next year are much better in a nonpresidential election without Mr. Obama at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Bobby Schilling, the owner of St. Giuseppe’s Heavenly Pizza in Moline, Ill., and a Republican former representative from a district rich with Democrats, is among those trying to make his way back East. He said that beyond the Tea Party faithful who will vote in the next election, “this time is going to be different, because the middle-class folks who are being affected by Obamacare are going to come out, lots of both Republicans and Democrats.”

Good luck with that, say the Democrats who disposed of four one-term House Republicans in the last election and fended off five other opponents, only to see them slide back into view a year later.

The 16-day government shutdown this year, in which none of the current Republican candidates played a role, was made possible by the Tea Party takeover of 2010, Democrats say, an argument they plan to make nonstop on the campaign trail.

“My opponent has a voting record that is very much in line with Tea Party thinking,” said Representative Cheri Bustos, who defeated Mr. Schilling last year.

As for the Republicans, their focus on the health care law has shifted from talk of a repeal to criticism over its rollout.

“The health care law is going to be enormous in this race,” said Nan Hayworth, a former representative who is trying to make a comeback in upstate New York. “But this is about people’s lives and the system not working. It is not a partisan issue.”

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The candidates’ approach differs from that of Republican incumbents, who hope to fend off challengers in the primary by focusing on undoing the law and on investigating the role the administration had in its flaws.

“The regular Republican repeal language would not be an asset to former members trying to come back in competitive districts,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.

Whether the health care law or the shutdown will help candidates remains to be seen.

While most voters blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown, the scorn for all of Congress is historic in its depth. The health care law, while under fire, remains popular among Democratic voters, whom most of the returning candidates need in order to win. And even among the opponents of the law, there is a sense that dysfunctional politics underlie its problems.

“To me, the blame game is played by the whole Congress,” said Curt Snyder, a vice president of Numerical Precision, a component manufacturer in Wheeling, Ill. Mr. Dold’s opponent, Representative Brad Schneider, visited there recently to discuss the shutdown, which temporarily hobbled the company. “At least he is taking the initiative to stop by and say we can’t let this happen again.”

Mr. Dold and other Republicans trying to mount comebacks are careful to distance themselves from the shutdown and the attempt by House Republicans to defund the health care program that presaged it. “The shutdown was a stupid tactic, and I spoke out against it,” Ms. Hayworth said.

Mr. Dold took it one step further. “The shutdown certainly highlighted the dysfunction in Washington,” he said. “I think that’s an opportunity for me to tell people that this is why you want moderates like me.”

Ms. Hayworth, who during her 2010 campaign aligned with the ultraconservative group Tri-State Sons of Liberty (“What a fine-looking bunch of radicals you are!” she said at one of its meetings), now brags about other affiliations. “I was a co-founder of the Common Ground Caucus,” she said, referring to a group formed in the previous Congress to promote bipartisanship.

The Republicans who lost in 2012 say it will be harder to tie them to the Tea Party because they have seen this play before and can counter it, with more name recognition. In 2012, “I was being attacked right out of their national playbook,” said Martha McSally of Arizona, who is challenging Representative Ron Barber, a Democrat. He had won the seat held by Gabrielle Giffords and narrowly defeated Ms. McSally in 2012.

“They did all the typical attacks, ‘Martha is part of the war on women,’ and all that,” she said. “I am now a known entity. We have had a year to build on the momentum of the last race, and now Ron Barber has to stand on his own record, and there is a sense in the community that people are frustrated with incumbents.”

Whether people are thinking about the health care law, the shutdown, Mr. Obama or something else entirely is an unanswered question.

“The national political environment will help frame these races,” Mr. Gonzales said. “One of the biggest unknowns right now is what the political environment is going to be like next summer, and that’s still an open question.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 16, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: G.O.P. Firebrands Tone Down Their Message and Run Again. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe